The blog of Richard Thompson, caricaturist, creator of "Cul de Sac," and winner of the 2011 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Today's Cul de Sac, January 23, 2011

This is dedicated with great affection to my friends in comics scholarship (hi Craig, Charles & Isaac!) and to my friend Mike Rhode, who often and rightly points out that this is the golden age of comics reprints (if you've got the shelf space).

Are we living in the Golden Age of Comics Scholarship? Please discuss.

A great boon of the modern day is the proliferation not only of old comics imagery but illustrative art of all kinds on the Internet. Not too long ago you had to pay staggering amounts of money to see the inside of just one comic book from the 30s, 40s or 50s. Now there are dozens of websites scanning and posting this material, along with this huge hidden museum of illustration done for periodicals that only collectors could see before. I don't know if the scholarship has emerged or not, but there's absolutely far more raw material available for scholars (or anyone else) to look at.

Mr. Rhode, I have used the floor, but the books, videocassettes, d.v.d.s, magazines, & newspapers are getting dusty. A resolution for 2011: ALL SHELVABLES ON SHELVES.

We do live in a Golden Age of Comics Scholarship. The reasons: (1.) The need for academia to find new areas of study as it churns out more ph.d.s than we need. (2.) Publishers & the internet supplying more of the comics archives to our fingertips. (3.) An increasing number of cartoonists who consider themselves artists & writers rather than cheap entertainment (Herriman, Trudeau, Watterson, & Spiegelman--to name four).

I do not mean to imply that comics are not a worthy area of study. They are.

Mr. Apatoff, the world of contemporary scholarship continues to appropriate forms of escape and turn them into research subjects. It has happened to movies, television, radio, popular magazines, romance novels, the internet, video games, & comics.